“Was that necessary?” Marguerite asked the injured paladin in an undertone.
“It was all good advice,” said Sir Xavier. “He’s being conscientious.” The older man paused, and the humor left his eyes as well. “He’s right, though. I’m fairly certain we’re safe over here, and I ought to be able to see a demon jump, but if I got it wrong—and especially if I start acting bizarre—
run like hell and don’t look back. Get to the nearest temple and have them send out an army. A demon that can take a paladin is a walking nightmare.”
“Has that ever happened?” Marguerite watched as Shane hopped over the fence, drawing his sword. Wren had pulled out her axe and unslung her shield.
“Yes.” Xavier’s voice was grim. “I knew Lord Caliban, many years ago. He was the best of us, and then a demon grabbed him somehow. He murdered half the temple before the other paladins brought him down.”
“My god.”
Shane and Wren circled the demon steer. It limped pathetically on three legs, bloated and bedraggled. For a moment, Marguerite wondered if they were simply showing an abundance of caution, and then the thing charged.
It was blindingly fast and it moved completely wrong, throwing its legs forward in a way that no mammal should ever move. Marguerite was reminded of a roach’s scuttle. She put her hand to her mouth.
The two paladins dove in opposite directions. It focused on the bigger target. Shane danced backward while Wren buried her axe in the steer’s hind leg with the air of a woman chopping wood.
The steer screamed in a keening voice that was never meant to come from an herbivore’s throat and wheeled around.
Marguerite was already regretting her desire to watch. “This looks very difficult.”
Sir Xavier snorted. “This is the easy kind. It’s when they get into humans that you’re in real trouble.”
“How does that happen?”
“Nine times out of ten, it’s in an animal and someone kills the host thinking it’s rabid,” the Dreaming God’s paladin explained. “Once the host is dead, they either go back to hell unbound, or if they can they jump to another host. They usually can’t jump very far—most can only go by touch—but if the farmer or the hunter comes up to check if that animal is dead…” He sighed.
“What happens the tenth time?”
“The tenth time, they’re smart. Maybe they’ve lived long enough to possess multiple people, learned how to hide that they’re there. Then it’s a real problem.”
“Do you have to kill the human host?”
“If we can’t save them, yes. Usually we can bind the demon, and then we offer the victim a choice of exorcism or the sword.” He kept his eyes on the steer and the paladins dodging it.
Exorcism, Marguerite recalled, involved drowning the victim in cold water. The demon would flee and there was a chance, albeit a slim one, that the victim could be revived. It was not anyone’s idea of a pleasant experience, though the priests of the Dreaming God were supposed to be very, very good at it.
“You can’t make them jump back out of the victim?” she asked.
“It’s not a kindness. Demons are like barbed arrows. If you drag one out, you do…well, a lot of damage.”
“How much damage?”
He glanced at her. “Lady Marguerite?”
“Yes?”
“If the situation arises? Choose the sword before that.”
“Noted,” she said. Sir Xavier went back to watching the Saint of Steel’s paladins. Wren’s attack on the hind legs had been successful. The demon was dragging its back half behind it now, lurching and writhing like a broken-backed snake.
“So you send them back to hell, then,” said Marguerite, disgusted but not daring to look away in case something happened to her companions.
“Yes, but we bind them first. You have to get up close for that, which is why we don’t just shoot them with crossbows. Once they’re bound, the demons don’t come back. If they’re not bound, though, they keep trying to come back from hell.”
“I wonder why.”
The paladin’s expression was wry. “It’s hell. Wouldn’t you try to get out?”
“Fair enough.”
Shane approached the fallen demon, holding his sword upright before him. It was a strange, ritualistic pose, not at all like the one he’d had before. The steer screamed again, louder, a scream
that seemed to have words in it. Marguerite jumped, startled, and the paladin of the Dreaming God put out a hand to steady her. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s nearly done.”
Shane bowed his head and spoke.
She could not quite catch the words, but her ears popped and the demon went to its knees as if its strings had been cut. Shane stepped back.
“Oh, very nicely done,” murmured the Dreaming God’s paladin, almost to himself. Ramsey the priest clambered over the fence and approached the demon. “I’m surprised the god let that boy go.”
Marguerite would have asked about that—from what she’d heard, there was no letting go and a lot more never-having-chosen-in-the-first-place—but Ramsey walked forward. The steer began to flail on the ground, but it could not seem to push itself up again. Ramsey uttered another sharp phrase and Marguerite’s ears popped again, harder, and the steer froze, then began to speak.
“Yaahaa n’gaaaah kalaak kalaak nhai!”
Its voice sounded like rotting meat smelled. She wanted to spit to get the taste out of her mouth, except that it was in her ears. She wanted to run and keep running, to get away from that thing and that voice and a world where such things were allowed to exist.
The priest set his palm on the steer’s broad forehead. Her nerves screamed in alarm, even knowing that the priest was an expert and wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t safe.
Ramsey spoke quietly. She could not make out the words. Shane stood to one side, his sword still held before him, showing no sign of strain.
The demon’s voice cut off as if a door had been slammed, and it lowered its horned head even further, until its muzzle touched the earth. Ramsey stepped back and nodded to Shane.
The paladin lifted the sword high overhead and brought it down in a sweeping overhand strike.
Marguerite looked away before it landed. She was no stranger to death, but she preferred not to watch it closely.
When she turned back, the steer had been separated from its head and blood was soaking into the thirsty ground. Ramsey went to Shane, reached up, and caught his head. He pulled the paladin’s face down until it was only a few inches from his. Marguerite wondered if the priest was about to kiss him. Seems a trifle odd, but then again, demonslaying is clearly very complicated.
Ramsey did not kiss him. Instead he stared into the other man’s eyes for a long moment, then nodded and released him. He went to Wren and performed the same gesture, though he had to bend down to do it.
“Checking to make sure the demon hasn’t jumped,” Sir Xavier said. “If I may, madam?”
“Go ahead,” said Marguerite, torn between horror and amusement. “You can tell by the eyes?”
“On a demon like this, we’d probably notice because you were screaming in tongues,” he said.